Empowering British Bangladeshi Women Through Small Enterprise?

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Empowering British Bangladeshi

Women Through Small Enterprise?

A report prepared for Oxfam UK

June 2014

Dr Julia Rouse and Asma Mirza

The Centre for Business and Society

Manchester Metropolitan University Business School

The Manchester Metropolitan University 2014

[email protected]

0161 247 6010
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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ContentsAbstract ....................................................................................................................................... 4

Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................... 5

1. Introduction........................................................................................................................ 13

1.1. Empowerment Through Business Creation .................................................................... 15

1.2. The Study: Empowerment of British Bangladeshi Migrant Women Through

Entrepreneurship.................................................................................................................... 16

2. Research Methodology ........................................................................................................ 17

3. Background: Bangladeshi Heritage Women in Britain ............................................................ 18

3.1. Human Capital ............................................................................................................. 19

3.2. Economic Activity Status .............................................................................................. 21

4. Enterprise Support Services: The Local Policy Context, Community Hosts and the Enterprise

Projects...................................................................................................................................... 22

4.1. The Local Contexts for Enterprise Policy and Support ..................................................... 22

4.2. Welfare Support for Business Start-up .......................................................................... 25

4.3. The Community Hosts .................................................................................................. 27

4.4. The Enterprise Projects ................................................................................................ 30

5. The Resources at Hand For Enterprise Project Participants .................................................... 34

5.1. Background: Migration Histories ................................................................................... 34

5.2. Human capital ............................................................................................................. 35

5.3. Social capital................................................................................................................ 38

5.4. Economic capital.......................................................................................................... 40

5.5. Labour capital .............................................................................................................. 41

5.6. The Role of the Community Hosts in Developing the Womens Resources Prior to the

Enterprise Projects.................................................................................................................. 41

6. Business Start-Up Experience, Motivation and Opportunity and Orientation........................... 42

6.1. Previous Business Experience, Entrepreneurial Intention and Ideas ................................ 42

6.2. Motivation for Business Start-Up .................................................................................. 43

6.3. Commercial Awareness ................................................................................................ 45

6.4. Growth Ambitions and Attitudes to Risk ........................................................................ 48

6.5. Business Opportunities ................................................................................................ 49

7. Resource Command in Business Start-Up .............................................................................. 527.1. Economic capital.......................................................................................................... 52


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7.2. Social capital................................................................................................................ 58

7.3. Human capital ............................................................................................................. 63

7.4. Labour Capital ............................................................................................................. 68

8. Outcomes and Future Directions .......................................................................................... 70

8.1. Stage of Business Development .................................................................................... 70

8.2. Future prospects.......................................................................................................... 72

8.3. Empowerment Through Enterprise Support?................................................................. 77

9. Policy, Practice and Research Recommendations .................................................................. 78

10. References ...................................................................................................................... 81

This research was supported by Oxfam GB and the report is shared to contribute to public debate

and to invite feedback on development policy and practice. The views expressed are those of the

author and do not necessarily represent Oxfam's views or policy positions.


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Abstract

Most British Bangladeshi women do not have paid work and the multiple barriers they face

to employment are largely unaddressed by mainstream policies, leading to social exclusion

and poverty. In this study, Manchester Metropolitan University reviewed - with Oxfam and

other stakeholders - the viability of supporting British Bangladeshi women to transition to

self-employment. Specifically, two enterprise projects supported by Oxfam were assessed in

the context of wider enterprise and welfare reform as a means of empowering British

Bangladeshi women. Findings suggest that British Bangladeshi women have a keen interest

in economic activity, including self-employment. However, scarcity of human, social,

financial and labour capital inhibit the entrepreneurial process of mobilising resources to

exploit a market opportunity. We call for intensification, integration and innovation of

services supporting pathways to enterprise for people living in poverty. British Bangladeshi

women require command of a wide range of resources that can only be provided through

support from a wide range of institutions. We, therefore, propose that service providers are

brought together to offer more intensive and integrated pathways to enterprise. In

particular, women who are economically inactive require greater accessibility to the New

Enterprise Allowance. Of equal importance to resource acquisition is support to identify real

market opportunities and to mobilise resources to form a competitive offering. A form of

business development support allied to the effectuation model is proposed in favour of

conventional business start-up training. We conclude that self-employment can only be a

viable route out of poverty through innovations in resource enhancement and mobilisation.

Light touch programmes carry the risk of wasted investment and negative outcomes.


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Executive Summary

Research Aim

The Centre for Business and Society at Manchester Metropolitan University and

Oxfam UK have worked with a range of stakeholders in a process of engaged

scholarship to make sense of the experiences of British Bangladeshi women

engaged in two enterprise development projects. We aimed to:

o Assess the potential of small enterprise as a route of opportunity for British

Bangladeshi women currently excluded from economic activity.

o Identify practical service developments that are necessary to maximise outcomes for

British Bangladeshi women engaging in business start-up and to minimise the risk of

negative outcomes.

Background

Most British Bangladeshi women do not have paid work. More than half have the

official status of economically inactive, although we question this label, given the

valuable labour they perform in caring for families that are often large and extended.

A fifth of British Bangladeshi women are unemployed. Just 22% are employed and a

very small number (perhaps 1-2%) are thought to be self-employed. Yet, the women

we met had a longstanding desire to undertake paid work. They want to earn money

for their families, contribute to society and engage in a wider public life througheconomic activity. Some of the women are also coming under pressure to earn

money due to the negative effects of welfare reform on their families.

The first generation British Bangladeshi women we interviewed face multiple and

severe barriers to employment.Their education in Bangladesh was often limited to

primary school level or is unrecognised by British employers. Women born or

educated in Britain have more chance to learn English but are not supported to

pursue further education or careers due to expectations of early marriage and

paucity of support to re-enter work after childbirth. The British Bangladeshi women

we met have received only cursory public support to develop their education, English

language, work-based skills and community involvement. The community agencies

that have supported them are also under unprecedented pressure due to public

funding cuts. These economically inactive women are invisible and ignored by many

public agencies.

Is small enterprise a viable route to economic activity and public engagement for

British Bangladeshi women? We approached this question with caution because

evaluation evidence tells us that enterprise programmes for people living in poverty

often have poor outcomes. Entrepreneurship is a process of creatively applying

resources to a market opportunity and the womens constrained social positions


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mean they have limited resources and exposure to opportunities. Our concern is to

identify the type and scale of support required to help British Bangladeshi women

raise their resources and engage with opportunity through business start-up.

This research is set in the context of significant policy changes to business start-up

support. Community, regional and national services have been radically reduced in

recent years and the remaining services have been homogenised to streamline

scarce resource. The New Enterprise Allowance provides modest financial support to

help the unemployed transition into self-employment but there are problems of

uncertain eligibility and accessibility for married women who are economically

inactive. The impact that Universal Credit will have on self-employment is emergent

and we raise some initial concerns.

Oxfams Enterprise Programmes for British Bangladeshi Women

We observed two small enterprise support programmes funded by Oxfam UK and

located in different community agencies in the north of England.

In Community Host A, Oxfam funded a succession of enterprise projects: a pre-

enterprise support programme that culminated in market research into (but ultimate

rejection of) the idea of a community ironing business; technical support to form a

textiles business particularly focused on producing a designer product (a handbag

commissioned by Oxfam under a separate arts project that represents womens lives

internationally); and enterprise support to extend the textiles business to produce a

wider range of goods, mostly targeted to the local British Bangladeshi community.

In Enterprise Project B Oxfam funded a short pre-enterprise development project

that enabled a small group of women to identify potential business ideas and begin

to develop these into real propositions.

Raising and mobilising the womensresources at hand

We draw on entrepreneurship scholarship to conceive business start-up as the

application of resources at hand to create or exploit a perceived market

opportunity. We particularly focus on the employment of four forms of capital that

we know are important start-up resources:

1) Human capital (skills and knowledge);

2) Social capital (networks);

3) Financial capital (money and other financial assets);

4) Labour capital (when, where and how much the entrepreneur can work on

the business).

Here we summarise the womens resources, how they were affected by the enterprise

programme and the effect this had on their businesses. We also indicate priorities for

service development.


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Human capital (skills and knowledge)

In both projects, most participants migrated from Bangladesh as adults, do not speak

English well and have little or no formal qualifications or paid work experience. They

had commonly been constrained from developing their English, education and

workplace skills by in-law control over movement outside the home and the scarcity

of public support following migration. Two women migrated as teenagers and one

was British born; these three have higher English language skills and some work

experience. Most of the women have pursued fragmented and non-accredited

training through their community hosts. They all have extensive domestic and

childcare skills but as these are not accredited they accrue few benefits in the

employment market. Most have significant years of economic activity ahead.

The women in Project A either entered business with advanced needlecraft skills or

have received technical support to develop these. Some would like to take onhomeworking or a job in a textiles factory but opportunities are scarce. They are,

consequently, pushed to consider establishing their own textiles businesses, albeit

within this intensively competitive environment.

The womens isolationfrom their wider communities and from paid work mean they

have limited commercial awareness. This is evident in the desire articulated by many

to manage the backstage of a business while an unidentified business partner deals

with the tricky problem of finding and dealing with customers.

We argue that the effectual process of becoming knowledgeable about a marketand applying resources at hand to develop a competitive service or product is an

essential entrepreneurial skill, no matter how small an enterprise is, and that a form

of active business development support is necessary to coach the women in

developing their market understanding and honing their business development. We

suggest that this would be more powerful than the conventional business skills

training offered in these projects.

This may be particularly important when agencies such as Oxfam seek to leverage

their social capital to enable business starters to bridge into higher prospect markets

than those locally available: both the staff and the participants in Project A required

greater commercial skills to develop a business from this opportunity.

Several women hope to digitise their businesses. Like other mumpreneurs they

hope to reach a wider market whilst working from home during the hours that suit

their domestic commitments . There may be the possibility of the womens children

assisting in the development of a digital offering and extending the womens digital

skills. However, it is still likely to be a struggle to find a market within a crowded

digital marketplace and the women may need specialist business development

support to create profit.


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Social capital (networks)

The womens networks are primarily limited to their nuclear families ; while they

have significant obligations to their extended families, they receive little reciprocal

support. Cultural restrictions on their public lives and lack of skills and confidence in

speaking English and negotiating public transport mean that networks within the

British Bangladeshi community are limited and links to the wider community are

extremely scarce. The women commonly feel very isolated and angry about their

frustrated independence. Unsurprisingly, their knowledge about local communities

and markets is restricted.

The Community Hosts have been active in extending the womens public space at

least as far as their own setting. Further work is required to build skills and

confidence in engaging in the wider community and society and Host B has begun

this through a volunteering project. Mediating work is required to ensure that whenwomen do access mainstream services these are appropriately resourced to support

the womens needs for language support and a warm welcome.

The women in both projects drew on their cultural heritage as British Bangladeshis

to form their business ideas. This is unsurprising and represents a logical use of

available resources. However, it also means that most women planned to enter the

densely concentrated and fiercely competitive markets typical of migrant enterprise

that often rely on free family labour (which is unavailable to these women) and are

still unprofitable at the level of a living wage. The women did plan to serve the wider

community in their businesses but they have few networks to draw upon to learn

about demand in that marketplace.

Business is a possibility because the womens family and local cultures are

changing. They are permitted greater freedom to move in public space and show

great interest in engaging with the wider community. The project primarily linked

the women with one another. Business development support is required to support

them to make connections, learn about opportunity and devise competitive services

and products to serve better-off British Bangladeshis and the wider community.

Economic capital

The womens financial control varies across families. For women who migrated as

adults, long-term economic inactivity has resulted in very little controlover earned

income or welfare payments (even when they are the welfare recipients); some have

no control of cash at all. The British born women tend to have greater financial

power.

Four husbands are employed and two are self-employed, reflecting the high rate of

economic activity among British Bangladeshi men. Two have long-term disabilities

and no paid work.


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Years of experience in making do to provide for a family means that the women

have skills in bootstrapping (using available resources in place of money to fulfil a

need). This is a useful entrepreneurial competence but it can be taken too far if it

undermines competitiveness (e.g. opening a shop on a low income by compromising

on its location, level of stock and security). Women should be supported to assessthe viability of their business ideas and, so, build their commercial awareness.

In Project A premises and equipment were provided so the women did not risk their

own capital to start-up. After a short period of cash-based trading that did not

immediately turn a profit they gave up their textiles manufacturing business. This

resulted from a diagnosis of low profitability but may also reflect a failure to invest in

business development.

We were concerned that several women in Project B planned to start low-quality

retail outlets on a budget as low as 3-4,000. Their business adviser discouraged thisstrategy but not all women were dissuaded. Use of feasibility toolkits used in

mainstream business services may have helped to demonstrate the under-

capitalisation, low prospects and risks associated with such a venture.

British Bangladeshi women face additional businesscosts. Primary among these are

translation and business development support to learn about and negotiate with

stakeholders outside the British Bangladeshi community. They also face high

transportation costs because none of the women drive.

Neither the welfare system nor the Oxfam enterprise programme provide a start-upgrant. Advisors suggested that economically inactive women could access the New

Enterprise Allowanceif they signed on as unemployed at the Job Centre Plus but this

route was not formally outlined and uncertainty about the entitlement remained.

The women could only rarely draw on their nuclear families for financial

investment in business start-up and none expected to draw on extended families.

This means that the source of start-up funding that is most common in the UK

personal or family finance - is unavailable to British Bangladeshi women.

Labour capital (when, where and how much a business starter can work)

All of the women are mothers and three quarters have larger families (four to nine

children). They take the primary domestic role and receive little support from

husbands or children. Four are carers to family members and most are obliged to

visit and host their extended families regularly and at short notice. When, where and

how much the women are available to undertake paid work will be highly

constrained unless some of this unpaid work is challenged ; the women showed

varying interest in such cultural change.


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The enterprise projects have been conducted within school hours and financed

childcare for pre-school children during the training sessions. However, the business

advisers did not directly challenge the womens unfair burden of domestic

responsibilities, despite the barrier this is likely to cause to competitive self-

employment. Such empowerment work is required to challenge one of the mainbarriers to enterprise faced by British Bangladeshi women.

Most women intended to find time to trade through self-exploitation. They worked

hard to ensure all their domestic duties were covered prior to attending the course

and intended to do the same in business. This raises concern about the womens

wellbeing and the availability of labour.

Financial support for childcare is likely to be necessary to extend the hours that

women can dedicate to business and to make this labour more reliable. The

womens likely entitlement to assistance with childcare under Universal Credit hasproved difficult to establish, suggesting the need for dedicated information for

women transitioning to self-employment from economic inactivity.

Project Outcomes

Miscommunication meant that Project A participants perceived that Oxfam would

supply a market for their business by placing orders for designer handbags and

selling them on. In fact, Oxfam intended to support the establishment of an

independent textiles business and to support this by providing access to skills and

experience to make a handbag that they could help but not guarantee to sell.Our primary learning from this process is twofold. First, that enterprise project

participants must be empowered to understand and build commercial

opportunities. Second, that staff who are motivated to share an agencys social

capital to build better business opportunities must be commercially skilled and

widely supported.

After abandoning the designer handbag project, the women showed commercial

awareness of an opportunity that is proximate to them by making and trying to sell

cheap, traditional clothing and then abandoning this in light of poor sales. They

required further business development support to explore how (and if) they could

effectuate their initial ideato develop a commercial offering.

Unfortunately the women in Project A no longer meet, suggesting that non-

commercial enterprises may not build sustainable social capital. An outstanding line

of enquiry is whether social or co-operative ventures are feasible and beneficial if

they are positioned as training and resource-development programmes more than

businesses from project outset.

In Project B, some women progressed to test trading. While they were proud to

display their skills and enterprise to customers, few secured sales. The women will


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require extensive coaching and hands-on support to persevere in this process and to

develop a commercial business. This is particularly so if they are to break out of

selling very cheap goods to customers with few resources in their very local

community settings.

Few women managed to bridge into working with the mainstream business support

provider. In part this is because they were in a pre-enterprise phase that is not well

supported under contemporary policy provision. Local service providers also proved

unreliable in attending project meetings. The women desire engagement in

mainstream provisionbut this will have to be incentivised to meet their needs.

In particular, the women require intensive help to assess how to strategise their self-

employment transition in relation to their welfare entitlements. One-to-one

support is required to understanding the complexity of this under Universal Credit.

Overall, the enterprise projects generated only partial empowerment . Some

resources were marginally enhanced but the womens political consciousness was

unaffected, gendered household roles were unchallenged and there was little

evidence or appetite for collective activity.

Key Recommendations

Now is the right time to offer British Bangladeshi women the opportunity to develop

their workplace skills. This group has been oppressed, invisible and misunderstood

and this has led to radical under-investment. They are eager and under pressure to

break out of a long history of economic inactivity and should be supported to do so.

Support agencies, including business advice providers and Job Centre Plus, must

craft specific pathways to enterprise for economically inactive British Bangladeshi

women. This should include support for childcare and be made accessible to women

with limited English language skills.

A multi-agency solution is required to raise British Bangladeshi womens resources

to a level that will support viable business start-up. Key requirements include English

language, modern workplace and digital skills, network extensions and financial

resources.

The womens commercial skills should be raised throughintensive business support

that will enable them to develop a commercial offering through an ongoing process

of effectual engagement in markets and re-crafting of market offering.

Partnerships with higher education institutions, drawing on their enterprise learning

curricula, may be useful here.

Support agencies must provide appropriate language supportwhen serving British

Bangladeshi women to ensure engagement and avoid miscommunication.


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The additional costs, and extreme lack of personal financial capital, experienced by

British Bangladeshi women business starters should be ameliorated by direct access

to start-up fundingincludingand beyondthe New Enterprise Allowance.

Specialists in social enterprise should facilitate groups of women to explore the

possibility of trading together and/or starting businesses that aim to build capital

resources and a public life more than a commercial income.

Welfare institutions should support such activity by removing any impediments

posed by welfare rules.

Empowerment is likely to be deeper if women are enabled to work collectively to

lobby for appropriate support services, challenge cultural norms that constrain their

freedom and labour and, where appropriate, pool their resources to form collective

enterprises with non-economic as well as economic aims.


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1.

Introduction

For the last twenty years, there has been a popular political rhetoric that positions small

enterprise as an open route of opportunity for the disadvantaged. The underlying premise

here is that the primary resource required to start a business is personal determination, an

attribute that any agent can choose to activate. This notion is, however, contradicted by the

evidence base. Multiple evaluation studies warn us that incomes from self-employment for

people starting businesses with poor resources are very low, despite long hours worked;

often lower than the minimum wage (see Rouse and Jayawarna, 2011).

The finding that poor people tend to pursue poor business opportunities and produce poor

business outcomes is also predicted by entrepreneurship theory. Entrepreneurship is widely

understood as the outcome of the application of resources to opportunity (Davidsson and

Gordon, 2012). This may be in a linear process of drawing on resources to identify, developand exploit opportunities (Shane and Venketarman, 2000) or a more pragmatic process of

crafting a business opportunity out of available resources (Sarasvathy, 2008). We know that

business starters limit their resource investments creatively by bootstrapping (Jones and

Jayawarna, 2010).1 Nevertheless, business start-up is associated with the command of

financial, human, social (e.g. Jayawarna et al. 2014; Lee et al, 2011; Ram et al.,2008) and

labour capital (Rouse, 2010).2When businesses are started with very low resource stocks,

entrepreneurship theory predicts difficulty in building a competitive enterprise.

Of course, people need motivation as well as resources to start a business. The research

base tells us that motivation to apply resources to business start-up depends on

entrepreneurial inclination and wider life circumstances (Jayawarna et al., 2014; Jayawarna

et al., 2011). For migrants, in particular, it can be a survival response to exclusion from

employment opportunities which are increasingly dependent on locally recognised

qualifications. Entrepreneurial intention can exist regardless of a lack of resources. Indeed it

might be prompted by such scarcity and by a regulatory environment that permits business

registration regardless of resource ownership (Ram et al., 2008).

Individual motivations, resources and life circumstances are not just individual attributes,

they are embedded in multiple social structures that govern a persons life chances and, so,

shape their access to resources and way of building a future (Bradley, 1996; Archer, 2000).

Put simply, this means that poor businesses are often the outcome of underlying social

1Bootstrapping is the acquisition of resources without direct payment for them.

2Financial capital is the money and other material goods needed to construct an initial business offering and to

survive until the business creates an income and profit. Human capital i s a persons skills and know how. This

includes the dispositions and behaviour required to identify opportunities and orientate resources to create a

competitive business (sometimes known separately as entrepreneurial capital) as well as the skills and know

how required to produce the goods or services offered by the business and to perform functions such as sales,

staff manage ment and adherence to regulations. Social capital is the ability to draw resources out of networks.


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forces that limit resource availability, including (but not limited to) the skill to command

resources competitively.

Given the poor evaluation evidence, why help the disadvantaged to start businesses? The

pragmatic answer is that some people from all backgrounds are drawn to the ideal of

starting a business. Business start-up can also be an engaging process that empowers

people in certain ways by raising their aspiration and building confidence (Rouse, 2004).

Small enterprise might create a marginal space for income creation and social engagement

in highly patriarchal gender regimes; under certain circumstances it might even prompt

collective action (Al Dajani and Marlow, 2013). It is vital, however, that we are critical in our

enterprise inclusion activity (Rouse and Jayawarna, 2011). We need to work with

communities to identify the kind of services they need to develop a fighting chance of

starting a competitive business or, at least, of having an empowering experience during an

attempt at business start-up.

Policy makers interested in using entrepreneurship as a route of social mobility or

empowerment face two challenges: (i) to enable the disadvantaged to access more of the

resources needed to build a competitive business, and; (ii) to protect the vulnerable from

the potential negative outcomes of a poorly performing or failed business .

As it is difficult to select at start-up the businesses that will become competitive, it is

practically difficult to only support business starters with a good prospect of success. In any

case, this kind of strategy would, inadvertently, tend to support the better resourced. If

enterprise support is to achieve the goal of greater social inclusion then it must work withthe resource poor. Of course, it is important that business starters aresupported to receive

multiple rounds of market feedback on their business idea and to refine their start-up

activity in relation to market demand (Sarasvathy, 2008). Enthusiastically supporting

businesses disengaged from market realities can be disastrous (Rouse, 2004). Beyond

supporting feedback and adaption, programmes need to integrate business starters into a

range of services and networks to build their resources (including their own entrepreneurial

behaviour) to maximise chances of competitiveness. They must also help to manage the risk

of negative outcomes and maximise positive outcomes (such as learning) when businesses

do fail.

British small business policy has retrenched the provision of personal business support

services, especially for very small scale enterprise. The Government does still aspire to

encourage self-employment among the unemployed, however, and during the recent

recession self-employment rates rose significantly. Some of this may have been a survival

strategy for the better-resourced unemployed but the policy question still remains: what

kind of interventions are possible and effective to support self-employment by those facing

multiple disadvantage?


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In this context, three questions emerge: (i) what services are still available to support

enterprise journeys in particular low income communities?; (ii) what coordinating activity

can be devised to integrate disadvantaged business starters into these services and

networks?, and; (iii) to what extent is this offering sufficient to tip the overall outcome of

start-up support for people living in poverty into one of empowerment? By pursuing thesepractical questions we can begin to critique the logic of neo-liberalism that tends to assume

that the disadvantaged can create jobs for themselves by starting businesses with relative

small amounts of support. This will help us to understand the effect of underlying social

mechanisms on entrepreneurship opportunities and inform practice in supporting

enterprise inclusion (Rouse and Jayawarna, 2011).

The aim of this short research project is to begin to explore this research agenda focusing on

a specific social group (British Bangladeshi women who are primarily first generation

migrants) in two localities.

1.1. Empowerment Through Business Creation

As we have noted, empowerment through entrepreneurship is by no means guaranteed.

However, Al Dajani and Marlow (2013) have drawn on a 10 year study of Palestinian

migrants in Jordon to argue that empowerment may occur if marginalised womens

motivations are engaged via entrepreneurship into an empowerment cycle. They specify

this as: becoming aware of resource constraints and their social embedding; participating in

household and community processes to increase resource access, and; gaining some

resource control and using this to act as a role model and social organiser.

We note that women could take an individualised and partial route through the

empowerment cycle gaining marginally greater access to resources in a pragmatic round

of empowerment that does little to change underlying social structures or prompt collective

action. For example, women typically self-exploit by giving up their leisure and rest/sleep

time to create time for trading instead of questioning household or wider social processes

that have burdened them with multiple shifts of work and minimised their entrepreneurial

labour power (Rouse and Kitching, 2006). The individualised nature of entrepreneurship is

likely to undermine political reflection and activity (Rouse, 2004). We expect that social

change will only be achieved collectively if the women are encouraged to train and then to

trade or develop their businesses collectively. This issue has not, however, been researched

and so is an important matter for empirical enquiry.


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1.2. The Study: Empowerment of British Bangladeshi Migrant Women

Through Entrepreneurship

This study focuses on two groups of British Bangladeshi women who have different resource

bases and are receiving different levels of support from Oxfam UK. British Bangladeshi

women are governed by four intersecting social divisions: gender, class, race and ethnicity

(Bradley, 1996). These constrain their ability to access and apply certain resources to

business start-up but may generate access to some particular resources (e.g. ethnic markets

and resources). In order to create competitive businesses, these women are likely to need

considerable support to build resources. Their individual social positions will vary, however,

creating some heterogeneity in the groups that provides us with an opportunity to research

the needs of a range of women.

This study explores the resource needs of British Bangladeshi women starting businesses

and the form and availability of services required to address these needs. The research has

been undertaken in two broad phases integrated in a process of engaged scholarship.

Engaged scholarship is a participative form of research that actively draws on the

perspectives of diverse stakeholders to understand a complex social problem (Van de Ven,

2007). Our aim, then, is to develop greater understanding of the challenges of creating

empowerment through entrepreneurship and to develop associated policy, practice and

research recommendations, in partnership with Oxfam, programme participants and other

stakeholders such as local service providers.

The study is guided by a logical flow of research questions:

1. What resources do the women participants have to apply to business start-up?

2. How were these resources developed by the community project, enterprise

programme and mainstream services during the project?

3. How did the overall resource stock affect the opportunities pursued by the women?

4. How did the overall resource stock affect the business experience?

5. How were the women involved in identifying resource needs and acting collectively

or individually to fill these?6. What were the outcomes for the women and businesses?

7. What are the outcomes for underlying social relations in the community?

8. What are the key resource gaps that limited the chance of establishing a competitive

business?

9. What co-ordinated action could be taken by the community project, enterprise

programme and mainstream services to increase the chance of positive

outcomes and limit the risk of negative outcomes from similar enterprise

projects?


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In the following section we outline in brief the research methodology we have pursued to

address these questions.

2.

Research Methodology

This relatively modest research project was undertaken between January and March 2014 in

the north of England. It adopted an engaged scholarship methodology which means that it

intended to engage with a group of stakeholders concerned with enterprise development

among British Bangladeshi women to make sense of the womens social positions, support

needs and experiences. The research also had the practical goal of fostering greater

commitment and communication between stakeholders regarding the challenge of

providing effective support to British Bangladeshi women, as part of this sense-making

process. Its ultimate aims are to produce knowledge about these processes, draw this

knowledge into recommendations for policy, practice and research that are supported or

informed by stakeholders, and to begin to build commitment to enacting these

recommendations.

The research progressed in three phases. The first phase was researching the experiences of

two groups of women engaging in an enterprise support project sponsored by Oxfam. This is

the primary element of the research. The second phase was to explore the local support

setting in which the projects are embedded to develop an understanding of the services

available to enable British Bangladeshi women to explore, and transition into, self-

employment. The third phase was to explore initial research findings with stakeholders (the

women, Oxfam, local community groups, policy makers and Manchester Metropolitan

University) in a workshop to validate and adapt the researchers understanding of the

situation and to build a vision for future directions in enterprise support for British

Bangladeshi women. Each of these phases is summarised below.

In phase one, two researchers from Manchester Metropolitan University visited two

community settings in which Oxfam was sponsoring enterprise development work for small

groups of British Bangladeshi women. The women were primarily first generation migrants.

In Project A they interviewed three participants and the leader of the community setting. In

Project B they observed an information session given to a small group of women

participating in an enterprise programme by Job Centre Plus representative. They then

interviewed five participants. On another date, they also interviewed a leader in this

community setting. In both localities, some of the interviews were undertaken with the aid

of a translator. Interviews lasted for around 50 minutes and in most instances were tape

recorded. Confidentiality was assured to participants and, consequently, we have warded

against attributing our findings to particular women.

In phase two, the researchers interviewed policy and practice stakeholders associated with

the enterprise projects. An extensive interview was undertaken with the Oxfam employeewho led the final phase of enterprise support in Project A and the short programme of


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enterprise support in Project B. Another long interview was undertaken with a senior

representative of the lead contractor delivering start-up support to the unemployed in the

region. A telephone interview was undertaken with a representative from Job Centre Plus.

More informal exploratory conversations were also held with agents involved in business

start-up in other local agencies, including Manchester Metropolitan University and localauthorities. Unsuccessful attempts were made, albeit within a short timeframe, to engage

other stakeholders including the Local Enterprise Partnership.

Key interviews were fully transcribed. Interviews with the Bangladeshi women were coded

using Nvivo software. Key findings were summarised on thematic matrices. Pseudonyms are

employed in relation to all informants. All organisations are also anonymised except for

Oxfam and Manchester Metropolitan University.

In phase three, key stakeholders were brought together in a two hour workshop to discuss

interim research findings and directions for practice in enterprise support. The workshop

included British Bangladeshi women engaged in enterprise programmes, interested in self-

employment or trading as a small enterprise from Project B. Representatives from the

community setting hosting Project B, two local authorities, a social enterprise support

project, business growth programme, Oxfam and Manchester Metropolitan University also

participated. The workshop was supported by an interpreter.

The research findings are the independent report made by the researchers. The policy,

practice and research recommendations have been developed in partnership with Oxfam

and are informed by the views of multiple stakeholders.

Engaged scholarship is, ideally, a long-term and on-going process. Manchester Metropolitan

University and Oxfam intend some further short-term actions including presentation of the

findings and discussion of ways forward with Project A and widespread dissemination of the

research. Medium and long-term objectives are encapsulated in the reports practice and

research recommendations.

3.

Background: Bangladeshi Heritage Women in Britain

It is not within the commission for this project to review literature on the lives of

Bangladeshi heritage women in Britain. However, we have incorporated some initial analysis

of national datasets that enable us to set our resource-based analysis of the British

Bangladeshi womens capacity to engage in self-employment in a wider context.


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3.1. Human Capital

According to the 2011 Census3, there are just over 417,325 people aged 3 or over of

Bangladeshi origin living in England and Wales. Of these, 47.9% speak English as a main

language, 36% speak English well as a second language and 16.2% cannot speak English or

cannot speak English well. In comparison, the percentage of Indian and Pakistani originresidents who do not speak English at all or well is 7.4% and 11.1% respectively. We were

not able to access this data disaggregated by gender but, as cultural practices i n the

Bangladeshi community have tended to limit womens interaction with the wider

population, we suspect that the 16.2% of Bangladeshi heritage residents with no or poor

English language skills are more likely to be women. In short, we can expect that a sizeable

proportion of British Bangladeshi women who are first generation migrants will struggle to

communicate in English.

We also discovered Census 2011 evidence of educational disadvantage in the Bangladeshicommunity, particularly among older working age groups. We presume that older workers

are more likely to be the first generation migrants who are the primary focus of the

enterprise support work that is the focus of this report.

The qualification levels of Bangladeshi young people is broadly similar to the White

population. Indeed, fewer young people in the Bangladeshi origin population have no

qualifications than the White population (see Table 1). However, in both the 25-49 and 50-

64 age groups, the proportion of residents of Bangladeshi origin with no qualification is over

twice that of the White population. More than half (60%) of residents in the older working

age group (50-64) have no qualifications. Over a quarter (27%) of the middle working age

group (25-49 years) have no qualification. These proportions are higher than in the Pakistani

community and much higher than in the Indian origin population. This finding probably

reflects the poverty from which many Bangladeshis migrated and, ultimately, global

structures of inequality.

Table 1 Residents in England and Wales with No Qualifications

Ethnicity/Age (%) 16-24 25-49 50-64

White 11 11 25Indian 5 8 28

Pakistani 10 22 50

Bangladeshi 9 27 60

Source: Census 2011

The proportion of residents with a highest qualification at Level 1 is similar to the White

population in the young and middle working age groups (Table 2). In the higher age group it

is, however, less than half (6%) of the 13% in the White population.

3

Census data is taken from datasheets available here: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/datas ets -and-tables/index.html?pageSize=50&sortBy=none&sortDirection=none&newquery=ethnic&content-

type=Reference+table&content-type=Dataset


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Table 2 Residents in England and Wales with Highest Qualification Level 1

Ethnicity/Age (%) 16-24 25-49 50-64

White 18 16 13

Indian 11 9 12

Pakistani 20 14 9Bangladeshi 21 15 6

Source: Census 2011

Just 3% of the Bangladeshi origin community aged 50-64 have a highest qualification at

Level 2 (grade A-C at GCSE) (Table 3). This is less than a quarter of the White population and

just a third of the Indian population. In the 25-49 age range 9% of Bangladeshi origin

residents have a highest qualification at Level 2. This is almost half of the 17% of the White

population.


Ethnicity/Age (%) 16-24 25-49 50-64

White 27 17 14

Indian 21 8 9

Pakistani 24 9 5

Bangladeshi 24 9 3

Source: Census 2011

Almost a quarter (24%) of Bangladeshi origin people aged 25-49 have a Level 4 qualification

(NVQ Level 4/Certificate of higher education) or above (Table 4). This is a significantly lowerproportion than 35% for the White population, 32% for those of Pakistani origin and 55% of

the Indian origin population. These differences are even greater in the older working age

group. Just 10% of Bangladeshi origin residents aged 50-64 have a Level 4 qualification or

above compared with 28% of the White population, 26% of those of Indian origin and 14%

of Pakistani origin residents.


Ethnicity/Age (%) 16-24 25-49 50-64

White 13 35 28

Indian 28 55 26

Pakistani 16 32 14

Bangladeshi 15 24 10

Source: Census 2011

A much higher proportion of residents of south Asia origin have a highest qualification

ranked other compared with the White population(Table 5). This is particularly common

among people of older working age (50-64). This probably reflects qualifications gained in

the country of origin. Unjustly, these qualifications are often unrecognised by UK employers.

Consequently, they tend to carry relatively low value in the employment market.


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Table 5 Residents in England and Wales with Highest Qualification Other Qualification

Ethnicity/Age (%) 16-24 25-49 50-64

White 3 4 5

Indian 6 12 18

Pakistani 6 15 18Bangladeshi 6 16 18

Source: Census 2011

In short, there is considerable educational disadvantage in the older Bangladeshi resident

population. We presume that many of these are first generation migrants and that this

disadvantage arises both from the forces of global poverty and inequalities in the UK

recruitment market. We were unable to acquire the above data disaggregated by gender.

We suspect, however, that these forces will be felt most strongly by first generation migrant

women due to familial and social expectations in Bangladesh and the UK that they will behomemakers and, so, economically inactive.

3.2. Economic Activity Status

Economic activity is very highly gendered in the Bangladeshi origin population. According to

the Labour Force Survey, in the July Sept 2013 period4Bangladeshi men had the highest

economic activity rate of all ethnic groups at 89.8%. Women had the second lowest rate at

41.8%. The lowest rate was among Pakistani origin women (40.9%). This compares with

74.2% of White women. Thus, 58.2% of Bangladeshi origin women were economically

inactive, a pattern that is in stark contrast to exceptionally high rates of male economic

activity among Bangladeshi origin men.

Self-employment rates are so low in the female Bangladeshi origin population that no

official rates are published. We have managed to produce some estimates by manipulating

other available data although these figures must be treated with caution.

The Labour Force Survey estimates that, of the economically active Bangladeshi origin

women aged 16-64 in July-Sept 2013, 40,862 were employed and 9,427 were unemployed.

It does not give a total number for self-employed Bangladeshi origin women as the sample

size is too small to make reliable estimations. It does, however, report the total number ofpeople of Bangladeshi origin who are self-employed aged 16+ as 19,940. It also estimates

that 19,171 of these were men. This suggests that there may be under 1,000 women of

Bangladeshi heritage who are self-employed. This is perhaps just 1-2% of the economically

active Bangladeshi heritage female population and compares with a self-employment rate

of 9% in the White female population. Self-employment rates among men are 17% in the

4Labour Force Survey data for this period was taken from datasheets available here:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/datasets-and-

tables/index.html?pageSize=50&sortBy=none&sortDirection=none&newquery=ethnic&content-type=Reference+table&content-type=Dataset


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White population and 15% in the Bangladeshi heritage population. Although our figures are

not fully reliable, they do suggest an exceptionally low rate of self-employment among the

less than half of all Bangladeshi origin women who are economically active.

By contrast, unemployment is exceptionally high among economically active Bangladeshi

origin women, at 19%. This compares to male Bangladeshi origin unemployment of 16%.

The rate of unemployment in the White female economically active population is 14%.

The figures we have reported include approximations. However, taken as a whole, they

suggest a pattern of economic activity in the female Bangladeshi population that

approximates to: 58% economically inactive, 22% employed, 19% unemployed and a small

residual group (perhaps 1-2%) self-employed. In short, they alert us to the significant

importance of support to enable women of Bangladeshi origin to become economically

active. Given our earlier analysis of educational resources, this task is particularly important

for first generation migrants, including those with long British residence who are now

middle aged.

4. Enterprise Support Services: The Local Policy Context, Community

Hosts and the Enterprise Projects

4.1. The Local Contexts for Enterprise Policy and Support

State support for business start-up services has changed significantly in recent years. Under

the Labour Government, Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) were funded to promotelocal economies. The North West Development Agency commissioned a range of start-up

support programmes. We are informed that the last of these was the Intensive Start-Up

Support Programme (ISIS) and this was cross-funded by the NWDA, local authorities and

European Regional Development Funds. This start-up support provision ran alongside a

national small business support service called Business Link which was designed to act as a

signposting service to the myriad organisations providing small business support. In the

North West it provided an information service to all small- and medium-sized enterprises

(SMEs) through a call centre and more intensive support to growth and priority sector

businesses. In addition to ISIS and Business Link, a range of specialist enterprise supportprojects targeted specific communities and users in the North West. These were funded by

bodies such as local authorities and housing associations.

In 2010, the Coalition Government, led by the Conservative Party in partnership with the

Liberal Democrats, came to power. They made a decision to abolish the regional network of

Business Link advisors and the RDAs. These changes came into effect in 2011 and 2012,

respectively. Business Links extensive website (which included a wide library of resources

for business starters) was initially sustained but have now been subsumed under the gov.uk

service. These changes seem to have been inspired by the political belief that the privatesector ought to self-organise with minimal government intervention: the presumption here


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is that small businesses will buy the services they need to compete and everything else is a

waste of money or actively skews the market. Exceptions have been made, including a

programme for unemployed people seeking to transition to self-employment who were

acknowledged to be unable to find and pay for start-up support in the open market. The

transition to a new process of commissioning regional business start-up support occurred in2011 and followed a hiatus when commissioning was halted while the new Government

decided on its policy strategy. We are advised that start-up support agencies were forced to

scale back their operations and invest in a skeleton service (where this was feasible) to

maintain their local relationships and delivery capacity. Informants tell us that many

organisations that delivered or partnered with start-up services have also lost capacity,

creating a loss of local relationships on which previous multi-agency working depended.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) commiss ioned a new era of business start-up

support for unemployed people under a new programme, the New Enterprise Allowance.

5

The term New differentiates the programme from the Enterprise Allowance Scheme

introduced under Margaret Thatchers Conservative government in the early 1980s. The

programme initially advocated business support through volunteer mentoring. In the

Greater Manchester area this contract was won by a private sector business. They did not

adopt a volunteering model but, instead, leveraged the relatively low price DWP contract as

match funding for a successful ERDF-funded start-up programme; between these two

contracts a professional-led start-up package is offered to unemployed people and others.

In addition, a few local authorities and housing associations have added to this core

product by commissioning pre-start or intensive support services that would not beprovided under the DWP and ERDF programmes. We are told that this includes some patchy

pre-start support for the economically inactive.

We are informed that the business start-up service being offered to unemployed people and

others is managed through a triage process. Initial queries are made by email and telephone

calls. Many enquirers are seeking a start-up grant, which are rarely available. If enquirers

remain interested they are booked for a triage assessment of their circumstances and

business idea. Some drop out at this point and others progress to attend a two-day

workshop that supports feasibility modelling and business planning. Delegates who decide

to start their business are supported through a small number of further meetings to

complete a business plan and launch their businesses. Relatively little is known about those

who are lost at the different stages of the triage process and the private sector provider

agrees that this is an interesting direction for research. Their particular interest is to learn

about the outcomes for people who receive business support but do not visibly start-up;

they wonder what positive effect this learning might have.

5For more information about The New Enterprise Allowance go to: https://www.gov.uk/new-enterprise-

allowance


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The private sector provider argues that its triage process significantly raises efficiency

compared with commissioning patterns seven or eight years ago when, the y argue, start-up

was provided by a myriad of small community agencies or local authority teams that did not

have the systems or co-ordination to offer a streamlined service. This may have led to

wasted business support serving people with poor prospects of start-up who are nowdeterred at enquiry or triage.

Research into the experience of different types of applicants using the service is required to

assess claims about efficiency in providing support to those with most prospect of thriving in

self-employment. There are clear dangers to encouraging people with inadequate resources

to start-up if the support available to them is scarce. Nevertheless, it is likely that there is a

tension here between providing a service that is efficient in business terms and that

promotes equality of opportunity to start-up. Our concern is that a process commissioned

to offer relatively shallow resource enhancement will not significantly raise the prospects ofproductive self-employment for the most disadvantaged groups. Given the current resource

scarcity, a triage process is probably rational as it promotes efficiency and encourages

critical thinking among disadvantaged people regarding their business prospects. A question

remains for co-enquiry by researchers, commissioners and service providers, however: what

support can raise the prospects of productive self-employment among disadvantaged

groups and how might this be delivered?

In the recent past, start-up support funders judged providers on the number of start-ups

(typically measured as businesses that have completed a business plan or, more stringently,

begun to trade). For the current start-up contracts, a more normative outcome measures is

businesses that trade for one year. Targeting this as an outcome and developing allied data

collection procedures seems to be one of the most significant changes to start-up provision

in the last two years. It indicates a tight focus on businesses with a clear capacity to launch

and sustain trading. While this positively transfers responsibility to business start-up

supporters to invest in business survival, it might provide a disincentive in working with

business starters with more challenging circumstances who require greater pre-enterprise

support and pose less chance of starting to trade or sustaining this for a year. This target

does not address other policy priorities such as ensuring that new businesses do not

displace existing enterprises through artificial competition, the creation of work that

generates at least the Minimum Wage and the efficient exit of chronically unprofitable

enterprises.

Prior to 2011 there were a myriad of small agencies commissioned to serve minority groups

including members of ethnic communities and women. Much of the funding for these

services disappeared through changes to regional start-up commissioning discussed above

and cuts in local authority spending. The agglomerated start-up service providers are

attempting to honour diversity within their mainstream services. In some areas they have

additional commissions to fund Community Advisors who can provide a pre-start service


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shaped around particular clients. In areas where these posts are not funded, the agency

informs us that they work with community organisations (e.g. council services, housing

providers, community groups) to provide the best service possible. A significant element of

this is training the staff in these agencies to be aware of the mainstream service so they can

refer to it and help to manage a warm handover.

Under the DWP contract, New Enterprise Allowance private sector providers are offering

start-up support in some community settings, such as larger Job Centres and libraries. The

start-up support provider reports that this has significantly improved Job Centre staff

awareness of what they do and how to make referrals. A concern has also been raised that

there is no specific self-employment track within the local Work Programme and that

participants may only be referred for start-up support at the end of a long Work Programme

placement, despite a pre-existing enterprise intention. An interesting area for future

research would be to observe directly the effectiveness of the self-employment offer andreferral process in the Work Programme to consider whether the blockage claimed exists

and if employment and self-employment are supported through the same intensity of

funding or, indeed, whether more intensive support provision could be made available via

Work Programme funding..

Ultimately, it may not be the role of an agency that is essentially commissioned to provide a

streamlined, mainstream business start-up support process to offer highly specialised and

community embedded business support to British Bangladeshi women with poor English

language skills. It may be that the previous model of commissioning specialist groups to

offer pre-enterprise and start-up supportis more effective. It is reported that this kind of

funding has been withdrawn, although it seems that some agencies (local authorities,

housing associations) are now making new commissions in recognition of a local need.

Whether they should procure with the mainstream agency or community agencies is an

important question. We note that community-based organisations have rarely been

subjected to evaluation studies. Future research could usefully examine the distribution of

specialist support and compare the effectiveness of services offered by community agencies

and in the mainstream. A potential role for higher education, drawing on their enterprise

learning work for students, is highlighted here.

It is beyond the scope of our study to evaluate the mainstream business start-up service

although problems with access are highlighted in our main findings. An important research

question remains, therefore: how adequate is a commiss ioning process that does not invest

intensely in specialist support to promote enterprise inclusion?

4.2. Welfare Support for Business Start-up

It is beyond the commission for this small study to research benefit rules in detail. We are

told by stakeholders that the New Enterprise Allowance is available to people who are


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unemployed and have a business plan signed off by the enterprise support agency

commissioned by the DWP. This may or may not involve engaging with associated business

support. Recipients receive around 65 per week for the first three months and 32.50 per

week for the subsequent three months, regardless of self-employment earnings. They are

also eligible for a loan of up to 2,500 with a relatively low interest rate. This is not creditchecked and so is available to people who might otherwise have difficulty in raising start-up

finance. We are informed that many people reject the loan because they are averse to the

risks associated with debt. An additional start-up loan of up to 10,000 is also available (at a

higher rate of interest) to those with good credit references.

We found that there is scarce knowledge available regarding routes through which the

economically inactive can access the New Enterprise Allowance and its associated support

services. Married or partnered women seeking work from a history of economic inactivity

due to care and domestic responsibilities may have limited motivation to sign on asunemployed due to their lack of eligibility to contribution-based Jobseekers Allowance and

because their National Insurance contributions are paid if they are in receipt of Child Benefit

for a younger child. However, it seems that they would need to sign on as unemployed in

order to then be transferred to the New Enterprise Allowance support. This statement is not

presented as guidance, however, as Job Centre advisors were not able to provide us with

definitive guidance regarding the correct process.

Married and partnered women may have limited contact with Job Centres and s o be

unlikely to access guidance about the New Enterprise Allowance from them. Single parents

claiming welfare support are now under pressure to become economically active and so are

more likely to have Job Centre engagement. In short, married women who form a large

proportion of the British Bangladeshi female population require information about the

New Enterprise Allowance from agencies beyond the Job Centre. They also need specific

guidance about how to access the New Enterprise Allowance from a state of economic

inactivity.

The British Bangladeshi women in this study are probably dependent on a wide range of

benefits, care allowances and tax credits. Many are transitioning to Universal Credit. The

consequences of self-employment on these entitlements has proved very difficult for us to

assess. However, agencies and women did raise six concerns regarding how self-

employment will be managed under Universal Credits:

1. Universal Credit means that all of a persons entitlement is massed together and

exposed to being effected by self-employment activity. This can make a person who

has long-term reliance on benefits feel very vulnerable compared to the former

system where they may have received a number of benefits and feel secure that

some of these will remain unaffected. It may also have a practical impact on

budgeting, as it is easier to manage on a low income if money is paid in severalsmaller amounts spread out throughout the fortnight or month.


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2. The single UC payment will also cover both partners in a couple, and will be made

directly to the main claimant, usually the man. This may accentuate intra-household

poverty, as currently some benefits are paid to the main claimant whereas others

are paid to the primary carer of the children, thus ensuring that at least a part of the

money in paid directly to the women.3. Eligibility will relate to a persons self-declaration of earnings and there is thought to

be a significant room for error in this process as sole traders often have poor

accountancy records and separation between business accounts and household

accounts; assessors may well confuse business turnover for earnings and disregard

ad hoc personal investment in business.

4. Routes back into Universal Credit are reported to be stringent, preventing return on

multiple occasions and to similar forms of trading; this may possibly discourage

people from learning from initial experiences and applying this learning at new

attempts at the same form of trade.5. Universal Credit may not include initial underwriting of support for those

transitioning to the self-employed equal to the New Enterprise Allowance.

6. Under Universal Credit the assumption will be made that after a year of trading the

self-employed earn at least the minimum wage, which may not always be the case

and particularly so for people who start-up with multiple barriers and so struggle to

launch a business quickly or to become fully competitive.

7. Recipients of Universal Credit will receive 85 percent of their childcare costs for

hours spent productively in self-employment but it is unclear how the system will

support time spent on business development in the early stages of trading or during

downturns and fluctuations in earnings experienced by people in precarious self-

employment.

8. The route of transition from childcare support under Universal Credit to the Tax

Free Childcare system (where the Government contributes 20 percent of childcare

costs) is unclear; this may discourage exit from Universal Credit. 6

If Universal Credit is launched without resolving some of these issues there will be new and

additional need for start-up programmes to support clients to develop formalised systems

of accounting early into business launch. Stringency regarding income from self-employment, and the effect this has on benefit and childcare payments, may well

discourage attempts at self-employment by the most vulnerable.

4.3. The Community Hosts

In order to protect the confidentiality of the community organisations and women

participating in this study, the community hosts are presented as Community Host A and

Community Host B.

6

For further critique of chil dcare support for the self -employed under recent poli cy changes see a statementreleased regarding the Budget 2014 by the Womens Budget Group ( http://www.wbg.org.uk/2014-

assessments/).


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Community Host A

Community Host A was established around 30 years ago. It serves women and children who

are primarily of Bangladeshi heritage. The project focuses on first generation migrants who

are socially disadvantaged. The men often migrated in the 1970s and 1980s for jobs in local

manufacturing but these jobs have often disappeared due to industrial restructuring. The

women have been economically inactive and have limited education, work experience and

English language skills. These first generation families tend to live in rented accommodation

and struggle financially due to limited employment prospects. It is reported that second and

third generation British Bangladeshi residents are often more affluent, engaging in paid

work that is sometimes in professional roles and more often owning their own homes.

Nevertheless, the first generation migrants remain in need of assistance. The project

employs fewer than ten staff. It has a nursery and play sc heme and provides childrens

social services. It offers services to women to enable their skill and language development,healthy living, volunteering and access to mainstream services.

In the past, the group specialised in developing garment manufacturing skills that were

credentialised and it has a fully equipped sewing studio. Sewing was selected as a vocation

due to a desire among first generation migrants to develop homeworking opportunities and

a demand for this service from local industry. Industrial restructuring has radically reduced

this demand and women have struggled to access the residual employment opportunities

still available in the garment manufacture industry due to poor English language skills. As a

consequence of this, and the centralisation of further education provision, funding for

community based garment manufacture training ceased three years ago. The community

agency thus faces a challenge: how to make use of the womens sewing skills and the

centres facilities? The idea of a sewing business has emerged from this circumstance. We

are informed that a sewing business idea was pursued in the past but was not fully

developed. The project supported by Oxfam is a more serious attempt at creating a

community-based sewing business. As the Community Host has not specialised in enterprise

support, it does not have the internal skills to start or run businesses. Instead, it has sought

a partnership with Oxfam to provide this service. It does, however, have the aspiration of

using its sewing facilities in the form of a community business or social enterprise.

Community Host A reports that another significant part of its work in the past has been to

empower women to develop some public life beyond the home and independent ability to

access mainstream services. They tell us that the womens movement in public space was

commonly sanctioned by their in-laws on arrival in Britain. This fierce protection of

gendered identities probably reflects a communitys reaction to migration in a context of

widespread racism and their subsequent creation of an ethnic enclave. The women

reportedly had limited control of family finances and little understanding about how to

access local services historically. We are told that the resulting lack of control,

dissatisfaction and inability to access help resulted in a high prevalence of mental health


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problems. The agency was powerful in changing community behaviours by negotiating the

womens freedom to access their own services. They achieved this by visiting homes,

encouraging the women to come to events and convincing in-laws of the respectability of

this. The task of raising the womens skills, confidence and engagement in the wider

community seems to remain a challenge. While women are free to attend events at thecommunity centre, many seem to have restricted public lives and limited English language

skills, formal education or work experience. This seems to reflect under-investment by local

services in engaging the women through either specialist or mainstream services.

Indeed, in recent years, Community Host A has been affected by cutbacks in local funding

for services it does offer. In particular, funding to provide further education has been

restricted; for example, they can now only offer short information technology courses and

the women can only attend each unit once. This has not only reduced the service available

locally to first generation migrants. It has also led to a struggle to pay the organisationsoverheads for the building and core staff. The agency has adapted by letting rooms for hire

but is still facing a financial challenge.

Community Host B

Community Host B supports a broad community but particularly the British Bangladeshi

community and women who dont have access to mainstream services. They report that the

local community is one of the most deprived in the region. The people live in a mixed

housing environment. A majority of the women are economically inactive due to constraints

from inside and outside the community. Community Host B cites barriers to work includinglow levels of education, lack of confidence, poor English, large/extended families, pressure

from families (in-laws/husbands) to behave in culturally appropriate ways, restrictions on

mobility and unfair lack of recognition of Bangladeshi qualifications by British employers. In

the community groups experience, mainstream local agencies do not reach out to these

women and, consequently, the women have poor access to services and resources. Indeed,

Community Host B reported a pattern of services constantly referring users to other service

providers until, in the end, no service is provided at all; they refer to this as passing the

buck. They suspect that this behaviour emerges, in part, due to poor understanding of

British Bangladeshi women and the contexts they inhabit. It seems to reflect a failure to

commission services that are skilled and incentivised to serve the womens needs.

Community Host B reports that cultural factors further suppress British Bangladeshi

womens access to services and resources because the womens social isolation means that

they do not have the confidence or knowledge to assertively claim their rights. Together,

these factors can result in the complete isolation of women in their homes. As a result, a

high percentage of British Bangladeshi women in the community suffer from mental health

problems, particularly depression. Community Host B considers itself a fundamental

resource in helping the women to access services and resources that they desperately needyet are multiply excluded from.


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Community Host B is a charity that receives funding from various government and non-

government agencies. It is governed by a board of governors and has a manager who runs

its daily affairs. The community organisations primary source of current funding is to deliver

a project that empowers British Bangladeshi women by building confidence, language skills,

awareness about health and wellbeing etc.

4.4. The Enterprise Projects

Oxfam has funded different enterprise projects in Community Hosts A and B. Support to

Community Host A is part of a longer-term relationship. Both projects are aimed at

empowering British Bangladeshi women. The enterprise projects are described below.

Enterprise Project A (Community Host A)

Oxfam funded enterprise support began in Community Host A with a short course (about six

weeks) with around 12 women. This was run by a consultant with personal businessexperience. She did not speak Bangla. At the end of this course, some of the women had the

idea of starting an ironing business and were encouraged to do some market research. The

women found that local people did not demand this service and that they lacked the

resources needed to access a perceived market (profess ionals in the local city centre). It was

cited that the women lacked English language skills and transportation. It is likely that the

women also faced a particular form of social capital: the ability to understand and build

credibility in a market distant from their own experience.

The next intervention Oxfam made was to offer a sewing project as part of a plan to supportthe women to develop a sewing business. In a separate sphere, Oxfam had commissioned a

community artist to support a group of women to produce their own handbags as pieces of

creative art that also reflected the impact of the public spending cuts on womens lives.

Oxfam then organised exhibitions to display the bags, and several attendees asked whether

it was possible to purchase the bags. In response the community artist approached Oxfam

with a proposal to work with a group of women to manufacture similar handbags that could

then be available for sale. Thus, Oxfam paid for the handbag designer to spend a week

training the women to make the handbags. The artist agreed to allow the women to use her

designs in return for a design fee. Oxfams Programme Co -ordinator worked alongside thegroup to support them to explore options for establishing an enterprise to market the bags

that they had produced. In due course, a dedicated worker was appointed to take this

forward, and she later delivered an informal programme of enterprise support with the

three women who were still actively involved in the project.

Highly varying accounts are given by the women, Community Host A and Oxfam

representatives of the handbag project. We were not able to interview either of the trainers

commissioned by Oxfam to deliver the handbag project or the decision makers in Oxfam

involved in deciding whether to sell the handbags in Oxfam outlets (shops, fairs or

elsewhere). As we acknowledge that our account of this period is partial and fallible we


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summarise our impression of this situation in the interest of learning from the information

we have gained. This is part of our process of engaged scholarship; we are attempting to

create formative learning with stakeholders.

It seems that the handbags were complex to make and manufacture of a quantity suitable

for retail (around 25) took several months. Around half a dozen women committed

themselves to this, working during school hours at Co

Documents

Empowering British Bangladeshi Women Through Small Enterprise?